Rabbi Eric Yoffie addresses a plenary session at J Street's first national conference in Washington, D.C., October 26, 2009. (Photo: Daniel Sieradski)

On Monday, October 26, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, America's largest Jewish religious denomination, addressed a plenary session of the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby J Street's first national conference in Washington, D.C., drawing cheers and jeers alike from attendees.

Yoffie's appearance at J Street was something of a coup for the nascent group, as it re-established some legitimacy lost when, in December of 2008, Yoffie condemned J Street's position against Israel's war in Gaza as "morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve." Yoffie's denunciation of J Street subsequently became fodder for the pro-Israel right, which used his remarks to paint J Street as being even too-far left for the left itself.

Nonetheless, J Street welcomed Yoffie's participation in the conference, exemplifying the group's desire to engage those with whom it disagrees, in the greater interest of promoting more open dialogue within the Jewish community about Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. And while it was clear, by the end of Yoffie's remarks (which included a roundtable discussion with J Street's executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami), that the Reform leader agreed on much more with J Street than he disagreed, there were clear differences on the issues of human rights and international law, particularly regarding the Goldstone report.

While J Street has neither condemned nor touted the U.N.'s Gaza war crimes investigation findings, it has cautiously stated the need for Israel to take the allegations seriously and investigate the charges. Yoffie, on the other hand, went straight for Goldstone's throat.

"This is not the time for a full discussion of the Goldstone report," he said, turning heads among audience members offended by the implication that Israel need not take credibly the allegations therein.

"Its reasoning is shaky in some places and more often absurd," he added, focusing not on specific charges, but on the seeming imbalance of the report's language, which he characterized as unjustly laying greater responsibility for the events in Gaza at Israel's feet rather than Hamas'.

Yoffie drew loud boos with his declaration, "You cannot be a moral agent if you serve an immoral master, and Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself for working under the auspices of the U.N. Human Rights Council."

I admit, I was among the booers.

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J Street, the self-dubbed "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby, has visibly distanced itself from individuals and organizations on the left in advance of its first national convention.

As neoconservative columnists and other hawkish pro-Israel voices mount pressure on members of congress to withdraw from the convention's host committee, J Street has taken pains to demonstrate that it is far more centrist than some progressives initially believed.

In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg published Friday, J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami took swipes at various individuals and organizations deemed "anti-Zionist" by the pro-Israel right, including the Bay Area's Jewish Voice for Peace, saying "I hope we get attacked from the left."

Ben-Ami doesn't have to hope too hard, as Jewish and non-Jewish Palestinian-solidarity activists alike have denounced the group for trying to cater to a pro-Israel center that pivots on the right.

After the Weekly Standard unearthed some incendiary writing in which the poets Kevin Coval and Josh Healey drew analogies between the Israeli occupation and the Holocaust, the two were promptly disinvited from performing at J Street's conference. On Tuesday, Coval and Healey issued a statement which appeared in the Huffington Post, faulting J Street for "caving to this sort of McCarthyism."

"The right stands by its politics, and practices solidarity with their allies," wrote Coval and Healey. "Too often the left doesn't. And that's why we often lose."

Coval and Healey's missive was also circulated by Tikkun magazine, which itself has grown increasingly critical of J Street since, as Tikkun claims, the group formally declined to have Tikkun and its well-known publisher, Rabbi Michael Lerner, participate in its conference.  

On Wednesday, Tikkun sent an email to its subscribers claiming that, "It is inconceivable that J Street could have emerged without the benefit of much of [Rabbi Lerner] and Tikkun's work. To exclude us is not fair to Tikkun and it is an unnecessary blow to [Lerner] personally."

The magazine's managing editor David Belden said the group would nonetheless participate in the conference informally, noting that "Rabbi Lerner continues to support J Street and urges people to attend the conference even as they exclude him."

In response to Ben-Ami's interview with Goldberg, one reputed anti-Zionist blogger, Mark Elf of Jews Sans Frontieres, quipped on Twitter that J Street was "AIPAC-lite."

Richard Silverstein, of the Tikkun Olam blog, who is organizing a luncheon for Israeli-Palestinian issues bloggers at the convention (in which, I hereby disclose, I will be a participant), took umbrage with many aspects of Ben-Ami's interview, notably his characterization of Jewish Voice for Peace. Writing on his blog yesterday, Silverstein remarked, "He is using Jewish Voice for Peace as a convenient foil thus allowing him to say to those on his right: 'See, we've dissociated ourselves from them.  Aren't you glad we're not them?' That does a terrible disservice to the legitimate role that JVP places in this debate."

Ben-Ami, of course, welcomes such vocal criticism, as it helps more clearly delineate J Street's position within the spectrum of Israel advocacy organizations.

"I believe that we are at the center," Ben-Ami told Goldberg. "The Marty Peretzes and the Michael Goldfarbs and the Lenny Ben-Davids are on the right, to the far right, and there are people to our left, and we are in the middle trying to put forward a thoughtful, moderate, mainstream point of view about how to save Israel as a Jewish home."

Editor's Note: Jewcy is a media partner for the J Street conference. This piece was not commissioned by Jewcy and all views expressed in it are those of the author.

As the pro-peace, pro-Israel lobby J Street's first annual conference approaches, neoconservatives are leading an effort to undermine the group and diminish its support on Capitol Hill.

Initially dismissed by more hawkish pro-Israel groups as irrelevant, J Street has become an increasingly powerful force over the last year, outspending all other pro-Israel PACs individually and winning the ear of the Obama administration on foreign policy matters. The consensus on the right has thus shifted from J Street being irrelevant to posing a strategic threat.

Last week, Israeli ambassador Michel Oren — an appointee of the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — declined J Street's invitation to its convention, writing in an open letter in the Jerusalem Post that J Street's policy positions "impair the interests of Israel." Those vilified positions include J Street's endorsement of the Obama administration's call for greater diplomacy towards Iran and a freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank, issues on which, polling indicates, the American Jewish community largely agrees with J Street.

Following J Street's announcement of its conference's congressional co-sponsors later in the week, the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, who has been leading the charge against J Street online, proceeded to contact each of the 160 representatives on J Street's roster inquiring as to why they were supporting the group's allegedly anti-Israel activities.

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Israel has never been the most popular of nations. Since its inception, the Jewish state has consistently found itself in the precarious position of having to choose between shielding its public image and implementing arguably necessary security measures that inevitably undermine that same image. When faced with the choice between accolade and survival, Israel has routinely opted to take those steps which it deems necessary to its survival, no matter the damage done to its credibility nor the Jewish People's.

Never so much has this been the case as with the second Palestinian intifada, which, since its outset, has compelled an Israeli military response staggering in its appearance of disproportionality and consequently staggering in its appearance of brutality. Worse yet for Israel, these events bear the unfortunate circumstance of coinciding with the advent of the Internet era, unfolding at a time that has inevitably placed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage among all international conflicts -- at least online. Throughout the last eight years, the World Wide Web has been an unyielding source of horrifying images and, to put it mildly, unflattering news emanating from the Middle East, as well as heart-rending appeals by Palestinian solidarity activists and an infinite stream of ill-informed and conspiratorially-minded (if not outright antisemitic) screeds demonizing the actions of Israel and the influence of its supporters in Washington.

All of this has lent to the increasingly popular view -- whether held by individuals in whole or part -- that Israel is a racist, apartheid state engaged in ethnic cleansing and war crimes and, furthermore, that the American Jewish community is exerting undue influence in support of Israel's purportedly Naziesque policies, which Jews "of all people" should know better than to pursue. In the specter of this image, is it any wonder that Israel's 2006 operation in Lebanon and its recent assault on Gaza inspired more public outcry and protest against the Jewish state than ever witnessed before?

For most Jews and Israelis, of course, such a depiction of Israel could not be any more outrageous, further from the truth, nor threatening to the security of the Jewish state and Jewish people around the globe. The lopsided vilification of Israel, as it's perceived, not only overlooks the nuances and mischaracterizes the nature of the conflict, but it also negates the legitimate concerns and rights of the Jewish people who are entitled to live in peace and security within their own state.

For this fact, countless Jews have tasked themselves with the role of stating Israel's case publicly and defending the Jewish state from its detractors whether in the media, on college campuses, or in the political arena. In the U.S. alone, dozens of Israel advocacy or "hasbara" (public relations) projects infused with tens of millions of dollars annually are focused full-time on countering such anti-Israel sentiment, from large community supported initiatives like those spearheaded by the Anti-Defamation League and the United Jewish Communities, to smaller initiatives like Fuel for Truth and Stand With Us, which were founded by independent activists. Many of these organizations provide training and assistance to college students to help combat anti-Israel activism on campus, including challenging the tenure of professors who are alleged to discriminate against Zionist students. Others have zeroed in on the online threat, with groups like GIYUS and the Jewish Internet Defense Force mobilizing Jewish Web surfers to tilt online polls and combat anti-Israel submissions to popular User Generated Content Web sites. The Israeli Consulate has even launched a Twitter account and its own various blogs in order to engage in the online debate.

Often, the case for Israel -- whether made in a blog entry or in a shouting match across a campus quad -- is stated with a series of standardized talking points: Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, it is the only reliably pro-Western ally in a notoriously anti-Western neighborhood, and it is an important strategic ally of the U.S. economically and militarily. In rebuffing claims made against Israel in its treatment of the state's Arab minority, it is claimed that the Arab population of Israel has full equal rights and protection under the law, that Arabs are free to vote in Israeli elections and to run for and serve in public office, and that the quality of life maintained by Arab citizens of Israel is unsurpassed by that of any other Middle Eastern nation.  

But what would happen to Israel advocacy efforts should those talking points cease to reflect reality of the situation? Or to be more exact, what happens when a prominent Israeli politician pursues proposed policies that would explicitly disenfranchise Israel's Arab minority or even eliminate its very presence from the state all together?

As chairman of the far-right party Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman has, throughout his political career, proffered many extreme ideas, from drowning Palestinian political prisoners in the Dead Sea to executing Israeli Arab legislators who maintain contacts with the Hamas government in Gaza. His most recent controversial proposals include redistricting the state of Israel to exclude Arab-majority regions all together and requiring the remaining Arab population to take a loyalty oath or otherwise forfeit citizenship. Both policies would be enacted without the democratic consent of the Arab population.

As ludicrous as these policies may seem, the party's strong showing in today's elections evidences that Lieberman's ideas are gaining traction among a war and peace process weary Israeli electorate hungry for new ideas that adequately address Israel's oldest challenge: maintaining both the Jewish and democratic character of the state.

In their biggest polling victory to date, Yisrael Beiteinu won 15 seats in the Knesset, coming into third place ahead of the once dominant Labor party. While the party has seen moderate electoral success in the past, neither Yisrael Beiteinu nor its chairman has ever enjoyed so much public support nor media attention. Now Yisrael Beiteinu may very well decide whether Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima party or Benjamin Netanyahu's moderate right Likud party forms the next government coalition.

What this means for Lieberman's proposed agenda remains to be seen. It's quite unlikely that such policies would ever see the light of day under a Likud or Kadima administration. Yet the fact that a prominent Israeli politician is gaining ground on such a platform itself gives cause for concern, as it risks further undermining an already considerably weakened pro-Israel position. Should such policies ever come to pass, experts say that defending them would be untenable.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former press officer at the Israeli Consulate General in New York said that should Lieberman's policies gain footing, "It would be a hasbara disaster."

"The state is already criticized in the media for the poor conditions under which Israeli Arabs currently live," he said. "These policies would only lend weight to the accusations that Israel is becoming an apartheid state."

"A lot of people on the center left in Israel and even on the right are already pretty concerned about how it looks to the outside world," says Amos Kamil, director of the Israel Advocacy Initiative at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. "The 'Zionism is racism' crowd is going to seize onto this and we're never convince them of anything."

Of greater concern, says Kamil, are those who have not yet made up their minds about the conflict. "It's going to be tricky for those in the middle. If an advocate is trying to convince people who are undecided, this might be a problematic turn of events."

Steve Rabinowitz, a former Clinton White House aide and a media strategist for several Israel advocacy organizations, concurs. Were such policies to be implemented, says Rabinowitz, "it would brutalize mainstream public support for Israel."

"Politically savvy American Jews who want to maintain mainstream American support for Israel would have to jump through a lot of hoops separating how they feel about Israel as a country, Zionism as a concept, and their lack of support for the Israeli government and its policies," says Rabinowitz. "We'd hear so much more of that than ever before, especially among those Jews trying to keep non-Jews in the pro-Israel fold. It's tough enough now as it is."

"I think it would definitely challenge us as a community whereas many of those positions are ones we don't agree with," says Amos Kamil. "But I don't think, as Israel advocates, that you can throw out the baby with the bathwater." That one may disagree with the policy, he said, "doesn't necessarily change our need to advocate for Israel. We can openly disagree with the policies and still defend Israel's right to exist."

Jon Loew, founder and chairman of Fuel for Truth, believes that Lieberman's policies could have both negative and positive effects.

"I think that some people will view his policies as extreme and become alienated further from Israel," he says. "But I also think other people will be able to relate to his policies and further embrace Israel."

When asked what kind of rhetoric to expect from Israeli officials and Israel advocates should they be forced to defend Lieberman's polices, the former consulate press official said, "There would likely be a major effort to paint Israeli Arabs as people who have not shown loyalty to the country. You would likely see statistics and images promoting the notion that Israeli Arabs support Hamas and the like. And I think that strategy will fail miserably."  

Loew, on the other hand, sees a silver lining. He believes Lieberman's proposals could have the potential benefit of reprioritizing the activist agenda.

"Right now the world is obsessed with stopping Israel from expanding their townships in disputed territories," says Loew. "Maybe if Lieberman is successful in implementing these even more controversial policies, the world will focus on that instead of nitpicking every brick that's laid in Efrat [a West Bank settlement]. It may end up giving Israel more room to negotiate."

For those wary of such an outcome, "The good news," says Rabinowitz, "is that there is nearly zero chance" of Lieberman's policies gaining real ground.

"I think the only way that Lieberman makes it into the coalition is if the coalition is so broad that he could never bring the coalition down by himself. [The winning party] would be foolish to build a narrow coalition with him, lest they be held captive by him."

"I would be surprised if his positions would be adopted by any coalition government in which he'd be asked to serve," says Kamil. Noting that Lieberman had previously served in both Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert's administrations to little effect, he says that, "Although Lieberman's policies might be repugnant to some, they have still never been part of any government he's been asked to serve in."

"I don't have to tell you that what somebody says in Israeli politics before and after an election are two very different things," he added.

The former consulate press officer also agrees.

"He's going to be reined in. You're going to see his position move towards the center because the Israeli public won't tolerate it and Netanyahu [the expected winner at the time of this interview] won't tolerate it. If he wants to stay in the government and have his constituency's interests met, he's going to have to toe the party line."

For the moment, a reprieve.

Over the weekend Facebook swelled with postings from British Jews seeking to verify an unusual and unexpected email appearing to have been sent by Britain's primary Jewish institution. The email claimed that a pro-Israel rally in London's Trafalgar Square planned for Sunday was canceled because it "might be perceived as the community taking one side in the tragic war in Gaza and Israel, and might be seen as supporting Israel's military campaign."

The email, which also called, in the voice of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, for "an immediate ceasefire, immediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and for lifting the economic blockade of Gaza," was apparently a hoax initiated by a group of young British Jews affiliated with the organization Jewdas.

Billed as a "radical Jewish diaspora group," Jewdas is well-known for having pulled off other provocative stunts in the past. Though they have not yet publicly disclosed their involvement, on Sunday an unidentified member of the group was apprehended by the London police as the alleged sender of the email. He is presently awaiting arraignment.

An anonymous source close to Jewdas told Jewcy, "We wanted to show another possible reality, to suggest that another Jewish community is possible. Those who believed it, even for a moment," he said, "were being given a gift -- a vision of a Jewish leadership which stands up for peace and justice rather than mindless ethnic solidarity."

The Board of Deputies did not respond to Jewcy's requests for comment, but a spokesperson, Samantha Cohen, described the incident to BBC as "an attempt to silence the Jewish community's support for peace for the people of Israel and Gaza."

Not at all, says the anonymous source. "This action was a call for new or radically reformed Jewish communal organizations. Ones that promote peace and justice over solidarity, and pluralism and democracy over hierarchy and backroom politics."

Taking issue with the Board of Deputies' branding of the Trafalgar Square rally as one that was "pro-peace," he said, "A rally that puts all the blame on one side and fails to call for a ceasefire would be better be described as a pro-war rally."

"We will not allow the notion of 'peace' to be bastardized, to become 'peace on our terms,'" he added.